Class-Based Environmental Analysis

Engels’s *The Condition of the Working Class in England* (hereinafter *Condition*) has received extensive and close attention from the academic community since its inception. Broadly speaking, this attention has followed roughly two paths: first, class analysis, which, based on Marxist class theory, history, and political economy, exposes and criticizes the miserable plight of the exploited and oppressed proletariat and the capitalist system; second, environmental analysis, which explores industrial city problems, environmental pollution, and the condition of human existence and its significance from the perspectives of sociology, ecology, and cultural studies. These two paths are often intermingled or separated from each other, and their interrelationship is mostly overlooked. The important contribution of *Condition* lies in its being the first work to link class and environment together, manifested in its use of a historically forward-looking ecological perspective to analyze capitalist exploitation and oppression, thereby opening up a new horizon for classical Marxist class analysis based on the class exploitation and oppression arising from different economic positions. At the same time, today, when the perspective of class and class exploitation is increasingly diluted or weakened in the environmental movement, it transcends various conventional environmental analyses based on strata, race, community, or group, demonstrating the scientific nature of adhering to the Marxist class analysis standpoint. Since the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s, the topic of the working class’s living environment has been submerged in various discussions of social stratification theory and environmentalism centered on the opposition and discrimination of indigenous peoples, race, gender, and strata. Rereading the class-based environmental analysis in *Condition* enables us, in our exploration of the working class’s living conditions, to avoid being confined to purely class-political significance and socio-economic concepts like the gap between rich and poor, thereby neglecting its deeper ecological implications. At the same time, it allows us not to lose the class analysis standpoint in modern discussions of environmental issues such as environmental science, urban ecology, and spatial justice, thus enabling a deeper grasp and excavation of Engels’s environmental political thought and its profound contemporary significance.

恩格斯的《英国工人阶级状况》（以下简称《状况》）自诞生以来，受到学界广泛而密切的关注。从宽泛的意义上来看，这种关注大致遵循两条路径：一是阶级分析，基于马克思主义阶级理论、历史学和政治经济学等对无产阶级被剥削被压迫的悲惨境遇和资本主义制度进行揭露与批判；二是环境分析，从社会学、生态环境学、文化学等视野探寻工业化城市问题、环境污染和人类生存状况及其意义。两条路径常常交叉混淆或相互割裂，其关联性大多被忽略。《状况》的重要贡献在于第一次把阶级和环境联系在一起，表现为以历史前瞻性的生态环境视角分析资本的剥削与压迫，开拓了基于经济地位不同的阶级剥削与压迫的经典马克思主义阶级分析的新视野；同时，在阶级和阶级剥削视野在环境运动中日渐淡化或削弱的今天，超越诸如各种惯常的基于阶层、种族、社区或团体等意义上的一般环境分析，表现了坚持马克思主义阶级分析立场的科学性。自20世纪60年代环境运动兴起以来，关于工人阶级生存环境的话题，一直被淹没在原住民、种族、性别和阶层的对立与歧视等社会分层理论和环境主义的各种讨论之中。重读《状况》基于阶级的环境分析，能够使我们在对工人阶级生存状况的探讨中避免局限于单纯的阶级政治意义与贫富差异等经济社会学观念，忽略其中更深刻的生态环境意蕴，同时又能在环境学、城市生态学、空间正义等环境问题的现代讨论中不丢失阶级分析立场，从而更深刻地把握和挖掘恩格斯的环境政治思想及其深远的时代意义。

I. Capital Reshapes the Environment: Nature, Society, and the Individual

一、资本重塑环境：自然、社会与个体

Engels’s *Condition* was written based on personal observations from 1842 to 1844. It describes the living conditions of the English working class in the mid-19th century, revealing that the working class in the era of large-scale industry was not only an economically exploited, impoverished class but also, precisely because of its lowly economic status, became a victim of the environmentalization of capitalist power. In *Condition*, Engels, grounded in class analysis, uses a unique, era-transcending environmental perspective to examine in detail the environmental oppression and exploitation of workers by capitalists. He points out that in the process of industrialization, urbanization, and capital expansion, capital reshapes the natural and social environment, and the living and working environments of individual workers become severely polluted, placing them in a miserable situation with extremely harsh living conditions.

恩格斯的《状况》写于1842—1844年的亲身观察。它描述了19世纪中期英国工人阶级的生存状况，揭示了大工业时代工人阶级不仅是经济上被剥削的贫苦阶级，而且正是它所处的低贱的经济地位，使其成为资本权力环境化的受害者。在《状况》里，恩格斯立足阶级分析，以独特的、超越时代的环境视角，详细考察了资本家对工人的环境压榨和剥削，指出在工业化、城市化与资本的扩张进程中，资本重塑自然环境和社会环境，工人阶级个体的生活和工作环境受到了严重污染，处于生存条件极其恶劣的悲惨境地。

The destruction and impact caused by capital’s reshaping of the environment are manifested in three dimensions: natural, social, and individual. First, from the natural dimension, since the 18th century, the development of capitalist machine-based large-scale industry inevitably brought about the destruction of the natural environment in both rural and urban areas, constituting the initial source of modern environmental pollution and ecological destruction. The indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, large-scale deforestation, brutal reclamation of wasteland, occupation of farmland, and urbanization led to the continuous burden of nature being drained, breaking the balance between humans and nature and triggering a series of natural environmental problems. These are mainly manifested in: First, severe air pollution. With the application of large-scale industry and machinery, capital not only extracted natural resources from the countryside but also intensified the three-dimensional exploitation of the cities themselves. Due to large-scale coal smoke pollution, London gradually became the “foggy city.” Factors such as massive exhaust emissions from factories, carbonic acid gas from burning steam locomotives, and the obstruction of natural ventilation by dense urban buildings caused cities like Bradford to be “enveloped in gray smoke clouds,” making cities perpetual victims of digesting over-accumulated capital. Second, population problems became prominent. Industry concentrated labor in factories and cities, leading to a massive influx of population and natural resources into industrial cities. Urban populations grew as if by magic, springing up from underground, with city populations increasing two or three times over. “Two and a half million lungs and 250,000 fireplaces are crowded into an area of three to four square German miles,” [1]1 Engels, *The Condition of the Working Class in England*, in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, Vol. 4 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 337. A German mile (Meile) is approximately 7.5 kilometers. consuming vast amounts of oxygen. Third, industrial noise was severe. The machinery in capitalist factories operated 24 hours a day, producing deafening noise everywhere, which was primarily endured by the working class laboring under excessive workloads in the factories. Fourth, household waste accumulated. The massive concentration of urban populations led to mountains of garbage, stench, and disease. Fifth, river and water pollution. Factories not only emitted exhaust gases but also arbitrarily discharged sewage and toxic substances. “All means of keeping clean are taken away, and water is taken away too.” [2]2 Ibid., p. 358. Nitrogen fertilizer plants, tanneries, cement plants, and steel mills discharged industrial sewage into rivers, turning all water into foul-smelling sewage. Engels cites the River Irwell as an example: “Like all rivers flowing through industrial cities, it enters the city clear and transparent, but when it flows out at the other end of the city, it is black and stinking.” [3]3 Ibid., p. 359. A few miles northwest of Manchester, in Bolton, “a black stream flows through the city, and it is hard to say whether it is a small river or a long series of stinking puddles.” [4]4 Ibid., p. 360.

资本重塑环境所导致的破坏和影响，从自然、社会和个体三个维度展现出来。首先，从自然维度来看，自18世纪开始，资本主义机器大工业的发展不可避免给乡村和城市带来自然环境的破坏，构成现代环境污染和生态破坏的最初来源。自然资源滥开采、大量森林被毁、荒地野蛮开垦、农庄田地被占和城镇化等导致自然承担不断被榨取的重负，打破了人和自然关系的平衡，引发一系列自然环境问题。主要表现在：第一，空气污染严重。随着大工业和机器的应用，资本不仅汲取来自乡村的自然资源，同时还加强了对城市本身的立体式开采。由于煤烟的大规模污染，伦敦逐渐成为“雾都”。工厂大量排放废气、蒸汽机车燃烧的碳酸气、以及城市建筑的紧密阻碍自然通风等因素，使得布莱得弗德等城市“被灰色的烟云笼罩着”，城市成了永无止境消化过度积累资本的受害者。第二，人口问题凸显。工业把劳动集中到工厂和城市，导致大量的人口和自然资源流入工业城市。城市人口增长像法术一样，一下子从地下变出来了，城市人口增加了两三倍。“250万人的肺和25万个火炉挤在三四平方德里的面积上”，消耗大量的氧气。第三，工业噪音严重。资本家工厂里机器一天到晚24小时运转，到处是震耳欲聋的喧嚣，这主要由在工厂超负荷劳动的工人阶级承受。第四，生活垃圾堆积。城市人口的大量聚集，导致堆积如山的垃圾、臭气和疾病。第五，河流和水污染。工厂不仅排放废气，而且还随意排放污水和有毒物质。“一切可以保持清洁的手段都被剥夺了，水也被剥夺了”。氮肥厂、制革厂、水泥厂和钢铁厂，工业污水排入河流，把所有水都变成了臭气熏天的污水。恩格斯以艾尔河为例，“像一切流经工业城市的河流一样，流入城市的时候是清澈见底的，而在城市另一端流出的时候却又黑又臭”。离曼城西北几英里的波尔顿，“一条黑水流过这个城市，很难说这是一条小河还是一长列臭水洼”。

Second, from the social dimension, the natural resources of the environment are not only the object of capital’s appropriation and the basis for its development, but the social resources of the environment also acquire special significance in capitalist society. Capitalist large-scale industry destroyed the old agrarian civilization, the small-scale peasant economy of the land, and handicraft workshops, driving large numbers of unemployed workers and peasants into urban factories to make a living, forcibly resetting the social resources of the environment through the violence of capital. First, the means of production became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists, leading to an environmental opposition between town and country. The reason for modern class antagonism and the deteriorating social situation of the working class is that the working class has been deprived of all means of production, including, of course, land. Along with the separation of humans from nature, the disintegration of extended families, villages, or tribes, and the progression from villages to towns, and from small cities to large cities, the capitalist production system destroyed the natural connection between nature and society, thereby fundamentally changing the environmental conditions of society. Second, the profit-driven nature of capital gradually marginalized agrarian civilization. The former peaceful, idle, and comfortable life of the handicraftsman, completely isolated from the city, disappeared forever with the invention of machinery and the Industrial Revolution. New means of transportation—railways, steamships, and roads—“immediately brought the inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands into contact with civilization… the Gaelic-Celtic customs and language quickly disappeared upon contact with English civilization. The situation in Ireland was exactly the same.” [5]5 Ibid., p. 310. In counties like Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, due to the intrusion of private capital, roads crisscrossed the land, “opening the way for civilization to enter these remote places,” [6]6 Ibid., p. 311. and people’s lifestyles were completely changed. Third, the Industrial Revolution caused social relations and class differentiation in Britain, altering the social relations between people and reshaping the class-based environmental opposition in society. In the sparsely populated agricultural towns of England, because the possession and cultivation of land had passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie, people were forced to flock to the huge industrial cities. Two-thirds of them were engaged in industry; “they are composed of completely different classes, one might say, they form a nation with completely different habits and different needs from the past.” [7]7 Ibid., p. 310. Therefore, “the significance of the Industrial Revolution for England is like that of the political revolution for France and the philosophical revolution for Germany… the most important product of this industrial transformation is the English proletariat.” [8]8 Ibid., p. 307. It “replaced hand tools with machines, workshops with factories, thereby turning the laboring members of the middle class into industrial proletarians and the former big merchants into factory owners; it squeezed out the petty bourgeoisie and reduced all distinctions among the inhabitants to the opposition between workers and capitalists.” [9]9 Ibid., p. 308.

其次，从社会维度来看，环境的自然资源不仅是资本摄取的对象和发展的基础，同时环境的社会资源在资本主义社会也有了特别重要的意义。资本主义大工业摧毁了旧有的农耕文明和土地的小农经济与手工作坊，把大批无业工人和农民赶进城市工厂谋生，以资本的暴力重置了环境的社会资源。一是生产资料日益集中到少数资产者手中，导致城乡之间的环境对立。现代的阶级对抗和工人阶级社会处境每况愈下的原因，是工人阶级被剥夺了一切生产资料，其中当然也包括土地。随着人与自然隔离，大家庭、村庄或部落瓦解，从乡村到村镇，小城市到大城市，资本主义生产体系摧毁了自然与社会的天然联系，从而从根本上改变了社会的环境状况。二是资本唯利是图的本性，使农耕社会文明逐步被边缘化。从前手工业者与城市完全隔离、平静、庸碌而舒适的生活，随着机器发明和产业革命已一去不复返了。新的交通手段铁路、海船和公路“使苏格兰山地的居民立刻就接触到文明……盖尔-塞尔特的习俗和语言接触英格兰文明很快就消失了。爱尔兰的情形也完全一样”。在科克、里美黎克和克黎等郡，由于私人资本的侵入已经道路纵横，“给文明开辟了进入这个偏僻地方的道路”，人们的生活方式被彻底改变。三是工业革命在英国引起社会关系和阶级的分化，改变了人与人之间的社会关系，重塑了社会的阶级环境对立。英国伦敦人口稀疏的农业小城镇，由于土地的占有和耕种转到了资产者的手里，人们被迫涌向巨大的工业城市，其中有2/3的人从事工业，“他们是由完全不同的阶级组成的，可以说，组成了一个和过去完全不同的、具有不同的习惯和不同的需要的民族”，因此，“工业革命对英国的意义，就像政治革命对法国，哲学革命对德国一样……这种工业变革的最重要的产物是英国无产阶级”。它“用机器代替了手工工具，用工厂代替了作坊，从而把中等阶级中的劳动分子变成工业无产者，把以前的大商人变成了厂主；它排挤了小资产阶级，并把居民间的一切差别化为工人和资本家之间的对立”。

Finally, from the individual dimension, *The Condition of the Working Class in England* not only critiques the deprivation, destruction, and reconfiguration of natural resources by capital power under capitalist relations, which capitalizes the natural environment, but also more profoundly exposes how capital aggregates social resources and labor power, turning the impoverished working class into the carrier of environmental and ecological compression. At the level of productive forces, machinery, the steam engine, and the industrial revolution they triggered were not a blessing for the workers but instead plunged them into even greater economic and productive misery. Because machine labor defeated manual labor, “the mechanical looms of Lancashire brought about the complete ruin of millions of Indian hand-loom weavers.” Only industry “could treat the worker, only just freed from serfdom, as a lifeless object, as a thing.” The industrial revolution turned the worker completely into a simple machine. At the level of relations of production, because capital appropriates, exploits, and destroys natural resources without compensation, bankrupt peasants become homeless, turning into a working class stripped of all property. Large tenant farmers drive small tenants and owner-cultivators out of the market, ruining them into farm laborers and wage-dependent weavers. The bourgeois deprive natural resources and also deprive the living environment of the working-class individual, who is treated as subhuman. On the one hand, the forced labor of the capitalist mode of production separates humans from nature; this forced labor robs workers of all free time, alienating them from nature and spiritual activity and turning them into machines—“how could such work fail to reduce people to beasts?” On the other hand, the concentration of large populations weaves a net for environmental degradation, survival crises, and ultimately moral decay. Overcrowded housing, dim lighting, and foul stench severely damage workers’ health. Engels points out that in Liverpool, where capital commerce thrives and prosperity abounds, workers nevertheless live under barbaric environmental conditions. Filthy old districts, garbage-strewn tenement courtyards, and degenerate, stinking lodging-houses are packed with desperate, homeless workers. The capitalists place workers in abominable living conditions and environments, then exploit those very conditions for their own benefit. *The Condition* emphasizes that a key consequence of capital’s reshaping of the environment is that it imposes a political and class character upon nature; in the process of transforming wilderness, land, cities, and living environments—both natural and social—it directly produces the proletarian individuals who suffer deeply within the environment of large-scale capitalist industry, and this is expressed through class-based environmental opposition and environmental conflict.

最后，从个体维度来看，《状况》不仅批判了资本主义关系下资本权力对自然资源的剥夺、破坏和重置，使自然环境资本化，同时也更深刻地揭露出资本聚合社会资源和劳动力，使处于贫穷地位的工人阶级成为环境生态被挤压的载体。从生产力层面来看，机器和蒸汽机以及引发的工业革命，不仅不是工人的福祉，反而使工人陷入更大的经济和生产的悲惨环境。由于机器劳动战胜了手工劳动，“兰开夏郡的机械织机使千百万印度手工织工陷于彻底的灭亡”。只有工业“才可能把刚摆脱农奴制的劳动者重新当做无生命的物件，当着一件东西来使用”。产业革命把工人完全变成了简单的机器。从生产关系层面来看，由于资本无偿占有、开发、破坏自然资源，使破产的农民无家可归，成为失去一切财产的工人阶级。大租佃者从市场上排挤小租佃者和自耕农，使他们破产成为雇农和靠工资生活的织工。资产者剥夺自然资源，也剥夺作为非人的工人阶级个体的生存环境。一方面，资本主义生产方式的强制劳动使人与自然相分离，这种强制劳动剥夺了工人一切空闲时间，使他们远离自然和精神活动而异化为机器，“这种工作怎能不使人沦为牲口呢”。另一方面，大量人口集中也为环境恶化、生存危机，进而为道德堕落织下天罗地网。住宅拥挤、光线昏暗、恶臭难闻，严重地损害了工人的健康。恩格斯指出，在利物浦，资本商业发达、繁荣富足，可是工人们却生活在野蛮的环境条件下。肮脏的旧市区、垃圾成堆的大杂院、堕落霉臭的夜店塞满了走投无路的、无家可归的工人。资本家把工人置于恶劣的生存环境和条件下，然后再利用这些恶劣的条件为自己谋利益。《状况》强调资本重塑环境的重要后果在于，它强加于自然以政治的、阶级的色彩，在对荒野、土地、城市和居住环境的自然与社会的改造进程中，直接造就了处于资本主义大工业环境中深受其害的无产阶级个体，并通过阶级的环境对立和环境冲突表现出来。

II. Class-Based Environmental Differentiation and Opposition

二、阶级的环境区分与对立

The development of large-scale industrial production not only disrupts the natural ecological balance, causing environmental pollution, but also creates class-based environmental differentiation and opposition, deepening the inherent contradictions of capitalism. On the surface, the fact that the working class works in factories and workshops full of environmental problems, lives in slums or shanties near smoky factories, and lets their children go without adequate food and clothing, born in garbage heaps, appears to be the workers’ own free choice. Some environmentalists today still hold the belief that the workers’ miserable living conditions are the result of natural evolution or market forces. In reality, it is precisely the capitalist mode of production, driven by the pursuit of profit, that places the working class in this exploited and marginalized situation. In *The Condition*, Engels links the class exploitation and oppression of capitalist society with environmental differentiation and opposition. It is precisely through class-based environmental stratification and differentiation, environmental identity recognition, environmental enclosure and segregation, and environmental disciplinary control that the bourgeoisie increasingly intensifies and solidifies its environmental exploitation and oppression of the proletariat, thereby giving class and class relations a new environmental expression.

工业大生产的发展，不仅打破了自然生态平衡，造成环境污染，而且也形成基于阶级的环境区分与对立，加深资本主义固有矛盾。从表面上看，工人阶级进充满环境问题的工厂和车间工作，住在乌烟瘴气的工厂附近的贫民窟或工棚，让孩子缺衣少食、出生在垃圾堆里等，好像是工人们自己的自由选择。今天一些环境保护主义者仍持有一种信念，认为工人的悲惨生存状况是自然进化的结果，是市场决定的结果。实际上，正是追逐利润的资本主义生产方式导致工人阶级处于这种被剥削和被边缘化的境地。恩格斯在《状况》中把资本主义社会的阶级剥削和压迫与环境的区分和对立联系起来。正是通过阶级的环境分层与区分、环境身份识别、环境封闭与隔离以及环境规训控制等阶级手段，资产阶级日益强化和固化对无产阶级的环境剥削和压迫，从而赋予阶级和阶级关系一种新的环境表达。

1. Class-Based Environmental Stratification and Differentiation

1.阶级的环境分层与区分

With the advent of post-industrial capitalism, environmental stratification has increasingly become a primary marker of social opposition and class division. As early as the 19th century, Engels recognized the important role of the environment in class differentiation and opposition. Unlike Weber and modern social stratification theorists such as Bourdieu, who attempt to replace class distinctions based on differing economic interests with social stratification based on complex groups defined by market position, social status, values, lifestyle “habitus,” and the like, Engels insists on a class standpoint in environmental analysis, pointing out that the miserable environmental conditions of the working class are inseparable from class poverty and exploitation. It is precisely the opposition of economic interests between workers and capitalists that leads to class differentiation characterized by environmental disparities.

随着资本主义后工业化的到来，环境的分层日益成为社会对立和阶级划分的主要表征。早在19世纪恩格斯就认识到环境在阶级区分与对立中的重要作用。不同于韦伯及现代社会分层理论学家如布迪厄等试图以市场状况、社会身份、价值观和生活方式“惯习”等复杂群体的社会分层取代基于经济利益不同的阶级区分，恩格斯坚持环境分析的阶级立场，指出工人阶级悲惨的环境状况与阶级的贫困和被剥削是分不开的。正是工人和资本家的经济利益的对立，导致了以环境差异为特征的阶级区分。

In the process of capitalist industrialization, the binary class opposition between bourgeois and proletarian, rich and poor, is starkly manifested in the environmental form of urban spatial differentiation. Because of the severe environmental pollution generated by large factories, the meager incomes and livelihood needs of the working class, and the capitalists’ own need for environmental safety, urban housing planning is distributed concentrically around factories, presenting a ring-shaped structure of environmental pollution ranging from severe to light to none. Close to the factories and commercial districts are purely industrial areas; beyond this belt-shaped zone lies the middle class; further out still is the upper bourgeoisie. This “concentric circle structure” of urban building planning assigns different class grades to living areas based on the degree of environmental degradation, producing class-based environmental stratification. “The purely working-class districts, like a belt averaging about a mile and a half in width, surround the commercial district. Outside this belt live the upper and middle bourgeoisie. The middle bourgeoisie live in tidy streets not far from the working-class districts… The upper bourgeoisie live further out,” in suburban houses or villas, on well-ventilated heights or in splendid, comfortable houses with fresh country air. “Partly by tacit agreement, partly by explicit, conscious planning, the working-class districts and the districts occupied by the bourgeoisie are strictly separated.” “They are drawn into the large cities, where they breathe air far more foul than that of their native countryside,” and are placed in conditions fit only for beasts, forced into filthy, dilapidated factory districts filled with industrial exhaust and polluted rivers, suffering not only from poverty but also from the disasters of industrial pollution. Engels points out that “the division of society into great capitalists and propertyless workers is becoming ever more apparent,” and the class-based environmental contradictions are worsening, ultimately heading toward an inevitable crisis. Environmental issues become a barometer of the opposition between capital and labor.

在资本主义工业化进程中，资产者与无产者、富人与穷人的阶级二元对立以城市空间分异的环境形式突显出来。由于大工厂产生的环境污染严重，工人阶级收入微薄和工作生计的需要及资产者自身环境安全的需要，城市住宅规划以工厂为核心向外分布，呈现出由深到浅到无的环境污染环状分布结构。靠近工厂和商业区是纯粹的工业区，在这个带形区域外是中产阶级，更远处则是高等资产阶级。“同心圆结构”的城市建筑规划由环境恶劣污染的程度划归为不同的阶级等级的生存区域，产生不同阶级的环境分层。“纯粹的工人区，像一条平均一英里半宽的带子把商业区围绕起来。在这个带形地区外面，住着高等的和中等的资产阶级。中等的资产阶级住在离工人区不远的整齐的街道上……高等的资产阶级就住得更远”，在郊外房屋或别墅里、空气流通的高地上或有新鲜乡村空气的华丽舒适的住宅里。“由于无意识的默契，也由于完全明确的有意识的打算，工人区和资产阶级所占的区域是极严格地分开的”，“他们被吸引到大城市来，在这里，他们呼吸着比他们的故乡——农村污浊得多的空气”，他们被置于只适合牲口生存的状况里，被迫处于肮脏、破败、充满工业废气、河水污染的工厂区，不仅深受贫困之苦，而且陷于工业污染恶果的灾难之中。恩格斯指出，“社会划分为大资本家和一无所有的工人的情形日益明显”，阶级的环境矛盾日益恶化，最后终将走向不可避免的危机。环境问题成为资本与劳动对立的风向标。

2. Class-Based Environmental Identity Recognition

2.阶级的环境身份识别

In *The Condition*, we can see the concrete manifestations of environmental identity recognition for the working class under the 18th-century capitalist system. First, there is environmental identity certification based on housing. Large tenements, small cottages, row houses, lodging-houses, and slums are all marked as the universal identity of the working class living in abysmal environmental conditions: the working class, the proletariat, live in narrow, dark, damp, unventilated cellars, in tenements too filthy for pigs, in rookeries, in slums, and in small cottages controlled by capitalists, their squalor beyond description; the lodging-houses where proletarians board can only be endured by the degraded—beggars, tramps, thieves, and prostitutes.

在《状况》中可以看到基于18世纪资本主义制度下工人阶级环境身份识别的具体体现。一是关于住宅的环境身份认证。大宅院、小宅子、排屋、夜店和贫民窟等，被标记为处于糟糕生存环境状况下工人阶级的普遍身份：工人阶级、无产者住在狭窄、阴暗、潮湿、空气不流通的地下室，养猪都嫌脏的大宅院、乌鸦窝、贫民窟和受制于资本家的小宅子里，其肮脏程度是无法形容的，而供无产者寄宿的夜店，只有乞丐、流浪汉、小偷和妓女这些堕落的人才能忍受。

Second, there is environmental identity recognition based on occupation. Depending on their trade and type of work, the working class endures varying degrees of polluted or harsh environments and unavoidable health threats. In chapters of *The Condition* such as “Other Branches of Labor” and “The Mining Proletariat,” Engels points out that textile workers deformed by fixed machine postures, knitters working under strong light, mining proletarians with lungs full of coal dust, pottery and glass workers laboring under high temperatures, and peasant paupers driven off estates as a “surplus population” are all forced to work under appalling conditions, their bodies weakened, suffering from partial or general diseases. These diseases caused by harsh environments are almost universal among workers. All these illnesses arise from the very nature of factory labor. The diseases of the working class are intimately linked to the environment determined by their occupational identity.

二是环境的职业身份识别。工人阶级因职业类别和工种的不同，承受着不同程度的受污染或恶劣的环境，以及不可避免的健康威胁。在《状况》“其他劳动部门”和“矿业无产阶级”等章节中，恩格斯指出，因机器固定姿势而畸形的纺织工人、强光下的针织工人、肺里装满煤灰的矿业无产者、高温下的陶器工人和玻璃工人、被从庄园里赶出去的作为“过剩人口”的农民贫民，他们被迫在恶劣的条件下工作，身体衰弱，局部或全身疾痛。这些恶劣环境引起的疾病在工人中几乎是普遍现象。所有这些疾病都是由工厂劳动的性质本身产生的。工人阶级的疾病与其职业身份认定的环境息息相关。

Third, environmental identity recognition by age and gender. In the process by which large-scale capitalist industry created environmental pollution and the miserable conditions of the working class, the objects bearing environmental destruction and harsh conditions were more accurately differentiated according to gender and age. Child laborers and female workers, because of their youth and gender differences, were worth only half or less of the wages of normal male workers in the capitalists’ factories, and were favored by the capitalists. The large-scale employment of child and female laborers subjected young proletarians and female proletarians to even heavier environmental exploitation. Engels pointed out that “to drag children out of school and fresh air and let the factory masters squeeze profit out of them is in any case unforgivable.” [11]11 Friedrich Engels, *The Condition of the Working Class in England* (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1956), p. 168. [Translator’s note: The original Chinese text cites the Chinese edition; the English rendering here follows the standard English edition where possible.] As for women, the harsh environmental and working conditions they endured were “even more severe than for men.” [12]12 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 169. Because of the high temperatures in the factories, young girls developed abnormally and their sexual development was stunted. Some young women were fully developed and became pregnant at age 11. Women, due to excessively long working hours, suffered deformities, difficulty in childbirth, inability to breastfeed their infants, and at the same time all the debility common to factory workers. Therefore, the environmental identity recognition of female and child workers in the capitalists’ factories is precisely the most extreme manifestation of the capitalist system of exploitation.

三是年龄、性别的环境身份识别。在资本主义大工业造就环境污染和工人阶级悲惨状况的过程中，承受环境破坏和恶劣条件的客体，因性别和年龄的不同得到了更准确的甄别。童工和女工，因其年幼和性别差异，在资本家的工厂里只值正常男工工资的一半或更少，受到资本家的青睐。大量雇佣童工、女工使年幼的无产者和女性无产者承受更加沉重的环境剥削。恩格斯指出，“把孩子们从学校和新鲜空气里拖出来，让厂主老爷们从他们身上榨取利润，这无论如何是不可饶恕的”。而妇女承受的恶劣环境与工作条件“比男子更为严重”。由于工厂里温度高，年轻女孩发育异常、性发育受阻。有些年轻女子11岁发育完全并且怀孕。而妇女因工作时间过长引起畸形、分娩困难、无力哺乳婴儿，同时还有一切工厂工人共有的衰弱症。因此，女工和童工在资本家工厂的环境身份识别，正是资本主义剥削制度最极端的表现形式。

3. Class-based environmental closure and segregation

3.阶级的环境封闭与隔离

Weber once proposed “social closure,” echoing Parkin’s concept of “social closure,” [13]13 “Social closure” (社会封闭) and “social closure” (社会集群) refer to concepts from Max Weber and Frank Parkin, respectively, describing how social groups restrict access to resources and opportunities to maintain privilege. signifying characteristics such as social segregation, exclusion, and internal consolidation. In capitalist society, various institutional forces restrict intergenerational and intragenerational social mobility; this is precisely the effect of the mechanism of “social closure.” This exclusionary mechanism maximizes the interests and opportunities of the closed class itself, leading to different class cultures and life experiences. Giddens also explored this from the perspectives of class structuration and the formation of class identity, pointing out that the higher the degree of closure of mobility opportunities, the more conducive it is to the formation of a cohesive class, the most prominent manifestation being the crucial role of residential communities or clustered groups in reinforcing class characteristics and class relations. The intellectual origins of these discussions can all be found in *The Condition*.

韦伯曾提出“社会封闭”与帕金的“社会集群”概念相呼应，表征社会隔离、排他和内固等特质。在资本主义社会，各种制度力量限制着人们代际的和代内的社会流动，这正是“社会封闭”机制的作用所在。这种排斥性机制，使封闭性阶级自身的利益和机会最大化，导致不同的阶级文化和生活经历。吉登斯也从阶级结构化与阶级认同的形成等方面做了探讨，指出流动机会的封闭程度越高，越有助于一致性的阶级的形成，最突出的表现是居住社区或聚集群体在强化阶级特征与阶级关系等方面至关重要的作用。这些讨论在《状况》里都能找到其思想来源。

First, class-based environmental closure. Engels pointed out that the bourgeoisie adopts covert methods to carry out environmental deprivation of the working class. He took Malthus as an example, who considered the poor and unemployed workers to be “superfluous,” that “the poor come to nature’s banquet, but find no empty place setting,” and that nature commands them to leave, thereby denying the working class the right to obtain the means of subsistence. Engels noted that “this theory has now become the cherished theory of all true English bourgeois.” [14]14 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 123. In the planning of urban architecture and residential areas, the bourgeois indeed faithfully practiced this theory: the good environment was enjoyed by the rich, while the poor were left to sink into pollution and filth. “This city is built in such a peculiar way that a person can live here for years, go out on the street every day, and if he only goes out on his own business or for a walk, he will never once enter the workers’ districts, nor even come into contact with a worker.” [15]15 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 125. The social isolation of the inner city, “these highly concentrated poverty-stricken areas, social isolation … far exceeds what we previously assumed,” [16]16 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 126. capital, by virtue of the dominant position of class hierarchy, forms an environmental closed loop for the working class.

首先，基于阶级的环境封闭。恩格斯指出，资产阶级采取隐秘的方式对工人阶级进行环境剥夺。他以马尔萨斯为例，后者认为穷人和失业工人是“多余的”，“穷人来赴大自然的宴会，但是找不到空着的餐具”，大自然命令他们滚蛋，以此否认工人阶级获得生活资料的权利。恩格斯指出，“这一理论现在已成为英国一切真正的资产者心爱的理论”，在城市建筑和生活区的规划中，资产者确是很忠实地践行着这一理论：好环境富人享受，让穷人坠入污染肮脏之中。“这个城市建筑得如此特别，人们可以在这里住上多少年，天天上街，如果他只是出去办自己的事或散步，那就一次也不会走进工人区，甚至连工人都接触不到”。内城区的社会孤立，“这些高度集中的贫困区域，社会孤独……远远超出了我们以前假定的程度”，资本凭借阶级等级的优势地位形成对工人阶级的环境闭环。

Second, class-based environmental segregation. Against the backdrop of large industrial cities, the direct economic exploitation of the capitalist mode of production manifests itself with appalling intensity as environmental exploitation of the working class’s living space. The pattern of environmental classification of urban space extends from the spatial governance of enterprises (workshops, factories) to the segregation of every corner of daily life (housing, neighborhoods, transportation). It pushes the poor districts into the areas closest to pollution sources, the most恶劣, and the most harmful to physical health in the natural environment. “This is something common to all the great cities of the world.” [17]17 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 127. The bourgeoisie live in villas with beautiful environments and fresh air, while the working class lives in crowded, damp, cold cellars, slums, rookeries, tenements, small houses, and lodging houses, surrounded by other buildings, making it difficult to enter. In many urban areas, through the districts of working-class tenements, the bourgeois usually build broad, respectable streets like Miller Street, so that the dirty rear views of the poor’s dwellings are quite successfully hidden. Here Engels pointed out the hypocrisy of the bourgeois: “Nowhere is this more systematically done than in Manchester, where the working class is so systematically excluded from the main streets, and where everything that might offend the eyes and nerves of the bourgeoisie is so painstakingly concealed.” [18]18 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 128.

其次，基于阶级的环境隔离。在工业大城市的背景下，资本主义生产方式直接的经济剥削，以对工人阶级生活空间的环境剥削异常惨烈地表现出来。城市空间的环境分类格局从企业（作坊、工厂）空间治理延伸到日常生活的各个空间角落（住宅、街区、交通）的隔离，是把穷人区排挤到最靠近污染源、最恶劣、最不利于身体健康的自然环境的区域中布局的，“这是世界上一切大城市共同的东西”。资产阶级居住在环境优美、空气新鲜的别墅里，而工人阶级则住在拥挤潮湿阴冷的地下室、平民窟、乌鸦窝、大宅院、小宅子和夜店里，四周有房子包围着，很难走到里面去。在不少城区，穿过工人阶级大杂院的区域，资产者通常会修筑像密勒街一样体面的宽阔街道，这样穷人住宅肮脏的后景就相当成功地被隐藏起来了。恩格斯在这里指出了资产者的虚伪性，“像曼切斯特这样有系统地把工人阶级排斥在大街以外，这样费尽心机把一切可能刺激资产阶级的眼睛和神经的东西掩盖起来”就是最好的例证。

Finally, class-based environmental contrast. The rich concentrate wealth, pleasure, and splendor, and segregate filth, squalor, and poverty. “Modern refined architectural art has eliminated all the districts of the poor’s huts.” [19]19 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 130. However, “poverty will always carve out a path for itself anywhere, and will always exist in various ugly forms in the heart of the wealthy big city.” [20]20 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 131. Therefore, class-based environmental closure and segregation exist through the mutual opposition of the living environments of the bourgeois and proletarian classes. “The splendor of the aristocratic districts in the new city and the dirty poverty of the poor in the old city also form a striking contrast.” [21]21 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 132. The bourgeois live in splendid, comfortable houses with fresh air, with omnibuses passing every quarter-hour or half-hour to the city; on the banks of the Thames there are many beautiful large gardens, and villa-like splendid houses, most of whose architectural styles are Elizabethan. In the workers’ residential areas, under a chaotic building system, there are countless wretched cellars, small houses, tenements, and back streets. The houses, from cellar to attic, are crammed with people in every corner; there are no drains or sewers; the air is foul; inside and out, everything is indescribably filthy. The streets are narrow, dirty, potholed, and stinking. “The hiding places of these people, who are at the extreme of poverty, can often be found right next to the splendid mansions of the rich.” [22]22 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 133. What a stark contrast! The bourgeoisie create but stay away from urban pollution; for example, the eastern and northwestern suburbs of Manchester are the only suburbs where the bourgeoisie have not built houses for themselves, because all the factory smoke blows there, “letting only the workers breathe this coal smoke.” [23]23 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 134. Engels pointed out that from the contrast of class environments, it is not difficult to understand why such a city with beautiful suburbs gives a repulsive impression: the profit-making, wealthy, and pleasure-seeking English bourgeoisie are parasitic upon poverty, misery, and filth. The prosperity of the rich districts and the misery of the poor districts exist in comparison with each other.

最后，基于阶级的环境对比。富人们集中了财富、欢乐和光彩，隔离了肮脏、污秽和贫穷，“现代精美的建筑艺术消灭了一切穷人的茅屋的地区”。然而，“贫穷会在任何地方给自己开辟道路，并且总会以各种丑恶的形式存在于富庶的大城市的心脏里”。因此，阶级的环境封闭与隔离是以资产者与无产者阶级生存环境的相互对立而存在的。“新市区里的贵族区的富丽堂皇和住在旧城的穷人们的肮脏贫穷也成了一个惊人的对比”。资产者住在有新鲜空气的华丽舒适的住宅里，每一刻钟或半点钟都有到城里的公共马车经过，在泰姆河畔有许多美丽的大花园，还有别墅一样的华丽住宅，其建筑式样大部分是伊丽莎白式的；而在工人们的住宅区域，紊乱的建筑体系下形成多少堆糟糕的地下室、小宅子、大杂院和后街。房子从地下室到阁楼，每一个角落都塞满了人，没有排水沟和污水沟，空气污浊，里里外外肮脏无比。街道狭窄、肮脏、坑坑洼洼且臭气熏天。“这些贫穷到极点的人们的藏身之所是常常可以在富人们的华丽大厦紧邻的地方找到的”，这是多么鲜明的对照。资产阶级制造却远离城市污染，如曼彻斯特的东郊和西北郊是资产阶级唯一没有替自己盖上房子的郊区，因为一切工厂的煤烟都吹到这里，“光让工人去吸这些煤烟”。恩格斯指出，经过阶级环境的对比不难理解，为什么这样一个郊区很美丽的城市却给人一种可憎的印象，因为盈利、富足和享乐的英国资产阶级寄生在贫穷、痛苦和肮脏之上。富人区的繁华与穷人区的悲惨相比较而存在。

4. Class-based environmental disease classification

4.阶级的环境疾病分类

*The Condition* points out that the living conditions of the working class and the health problems they cause were confirmed in the particularity of the occupational division of labor in capitalist production. Since the 18th century, capitalist industrial production, in a new way, at the intersection of environment and politics, manifested itself through the diseases and health of workers, thereby opening a discussion on the universal environmental/disease problems of the working class, which constitutes the largest part of the national population’s health.

《状况》指出，工人阶级的生存状况及其引发的健康问题在资本主义生产职业分工的特殊性中得到了确认。18世纪以来，资本主义工业化生产以一种新的方式在环境与政治的交叉点上，以工人的疾病与健康的方式展现出来，从而开启了对国民人口健康最大构成部分的工人阶级普遍的环境/疾病问题的讨论。

Through its unique architecture and environmental segregation, the factory forces workers to endure harsh working environments and production pollution. The dust and foul air in the factory, the noise and roar of steam engines, work under strong light, cramped and suffocating confined spaces, iron ore work areas filled with iron filings in the air, high temperatures, toxic liquids, and other workshop working conditions—under such extremely harsh conditions, forced labor directly links workers’ labor and occupational environmental diseases. Engels investigated in detail the harm caused to the working class by different working environments. The work of threaders and winders is very harmful to the eyes; bleaching workers inhale toxic chlorine gas into their lungs; iron miners live in incredibly crude, cattle-shed-like shacks; grinders cough up large amounts of dust from asthma; ceramic workers work in high-temperature environments containing large amounts of toxic liquids of lead and arsenic; child laborers in glassmaking “are often forced to work at temperatures so high that the wooden boards under their feet catch fire.” [24]24 Engels, *The Condition*, p. 170. Miners inhale dust, blasting fumes, carbonic acid gas, and sulfur-containing gases, leading to premature tuberculosis and other diseases.

工厂通过其独特的建筑和环境隔离，使工人被迫处于恶劣的工作环境和生产污染之中。工厂中的灰尘和恶劣空气、蒸汽机的噪音轰响、强光下的工作、狭小得令人窒息的幽闭空间、充斥着废铁屑空气的铁矿工作区、高温、有毒液体等车间工作环境——在这种极端恶劣的条件下的强制劳动，使得工人劳动和职业环境疾病直接相关。恩格斯详细考察了不同工作环境给工人阶级造成的伤害。穿线工和络线工的工作对眼睛害处很大，漂白工人将有毒的氯气吸进肺部，铁矿区工人令人难以置信的牲畜栏似的简陋棚舍，磨工哮喘病咳出的大量灰尘，陶瓷工人处于高温的、含大量铅砷有毒液体的工作环境，玻璃制造的童工们“经常不得不在高到使他们脚下的木板都燃烧起来的高温下工作”。矿工吸入尘土、炸药烟、碳酸气和含硫的瓦斯，导致患上早衰的肺结核等疾病。

In his notes on the “mining proletariat,” Engels conducted extensive statistical analysis of the positive correlation between workers’ occupations and their average life expectancy. For example, most miners went down the shaft at age 19 and died between 40 and 50. Compared with the average life expectancy of 57.5 years for male workers in Great Britain, the average life expectancy of miners in northern Scotland was shortened by 10 years. The mine tunnels lacked oxygen, and the air was filled with dust, powder fumes, carbonic acid gas, and sulfurous vapors, which were harmful to the lungs, impeded heart activity, and weakened the functions of the digestive organs. Many died young from acute tuberculosis or in the prime of life from chronic tuberculosis; some aged prematurely, and others lost their ability to work. Therefore, the number of years the proletariat survived under unfavorable living conditions was below the general standard of life expectancy. The mining working class was more deeply affected by the harsh environment and pollution.

恩格斯在“矿业无产阶级”备份中，对工人职业与平均寿命之间的正相关关系做了大量的统计学分析。比如矿工工人，大多19岁下井，在40—50岁之间就死去。与大不列颠男工575岁的平均寿命相比，苏格兰北部矿工的平均寿命缩短了10年。矿井坑道氧气不足，空气中充满尘土、炸药烟、碳酸气和含硫的瓦斯，这对肺部很有害，妨碍心脏的活动，削弱消化器官的机能。许多人年纪轻轻就死于急性肺结核或壮年时死于慢性肺结核，有些人未老先衰，有些人失去工作能力。因此，无产阶级在不利的生存条件下存活的岁数是低于普遍的寿命标准的。矿业工人阶级受环境恶劣与污染影响的程度更为深重。

III. Class Environmental Discipline and Control

三、阶级的环境规训与控制

In reality, the social reality and the condition of the working class under the rapid development of capitalist productive forces since industrialization have been disciplined and controlled by the logic of capitalist wage labor and monopoly capital as an institutional existence. Engels pointed out that as a means of intervening, training, surveilling, and controlling the proletariat, capital power constitutes the mechanism of the state apparatus and colludes with the latter, constructing around economy and production a power operation of class differences, nature as a resource, the alienated working class, and its pathological living environment. The capitalist state, the police, charitable institutions, and the health system together form an organic component of capital’s environmental power discipline and control. Capital not only incorporates nature into the system of ceaseless valorization (through the violent plunder of land and resources, the formation of large-scale industry and factories, ultimately making the city the greatest source of pollution in history), but also, with the intensification of its control over nature, imposes environmental class discipline and control on the working class, which functions like a “non-human” machine. The stronger capital’s desire to control nature, the stronger its class control over the living environment of the working class.

实际上，工业化以来资本主义生产力高速发展之下的社会现实与工人阶级状况，是受作为制度存在的资本主义雇佣劳动和垄断资本支配逻辑规训和控制的。恩格斯指出，作为干预、训练、监视和控制无产者的手段，资本权力构成国家机器机制并同后者同流合污，围绕着经济、生产构筑了阶级差异、作为资源的自然、异化的工人阶级及其病态的生存环境的权力运作。资本主义国家、警察、慈善机构和卫生系统，共同构成了资本环境权力规训与控制的有机组成部分。资本不仅把自然纳入不断增殖的体系内（通过暴力掠夺土地、资源，形成大工业大工厂，最终使城市成为有史以来最大的污染来源），而且随着对自然控制的增强，对作为“非人”机器功能一样的工人阶级实行环境的阶级规训与控制。资本对自然的控制欲越强，对工人阶级的生存环境的阶级控制就越强。

First, the bourgeoisie’s discipline and control over the living environment of the working class. Through the stratification, differentiation, and segregation of urban residential spatial environments, the bourgeoisie monitors and controls the poor workers’ dwellings. For their own interests, they pack poor working-class families by the dozen into a single room: suffocating air, damp houses, leaking cellars, and leaky attics. Magnificent buildings stand adjacent to hidden slums, surveilling the workers’ hiding places. The workers, in turn, are confined to large, enclosed courtyards surrounded by buildings on all sides, enduring capital’s environmental exploitation and ultimately ruining their health. The unemployed are driven from their original residences and crowded into the slums of urban factories, deprived of the right to interact with nature. In reality, the working class, as a carrier of active environmental pollution, exhibits two functions: object and subject of environmental pollution. As an object, the working class bears the deterioration of nature and the living environment brought about by the capitalist mode of production; as a subject, the working class is regarded by the bourgeoisie as the carrier of filth and disease and the main source of the deterioration of nature and the social environment. Poorhouses and “workhouses” are important inventions of the bourgeoisie for disciplining the working class through state means such as charity and law, prohibiting environmental pollution, mobility, and environmental discipline. Those receiving relief are not only subject to strict restrictions and control but are also deprived of many political rights, including the right to vote. Engels called them the “poor man’s Bastille” of Manchester.[25]25 The Bastille was a medieval fortress and prison in Paris, symbolizing royal tyranny; its storming in 1789 marked the start of the French Revolution. Engels uses the term metaphorically to describe the oppressive nature of the workhouses.

首先，资产者对工人阶级生存环境的规训与控制。资产者通过城市住宅空间环境的分层、区分和隔离，掌控和监视贫穷的工人住宅。为了自己的利益，他们把穷苦的工人阶级成打地塞在一间屋子里：闷死人的空气、潮湿的房屋、冒水的地下室、漏雨的阁楼。华丽大厦紧邻掩藏着的贫民区，监视着工人的藏身处。而工人则被关在四面都被建筑圈起来的大杂院里，忍受资本的环境剥削，最终毁掉健康。无业者从原居住地被驱赶出来，集中拥挤在城市工厂的贫民窟里，被剥夺了与自然相处的权利。实际上，工人阶级作为活动的环境污染载体，展现出环境污染的客体和主体两大功能。作为客体，工人阶级承受了资本主义生产方式带来的自然和生存环境的恶化；作为主体，工人阶级被资产阶级当作肮脏、疾病的携带者和自然与社会环境恶化的主要来源。贫民教养院和“习艺所”，是资产者对工人阶级通过慈善和法律等国家手段禁止环境污染、流动和环境规训的重要发明。接受救济者不仅受到严格的限制和控制，还被剥夺选举等许多政治权利。恩格斯称之为曼彻斯特的“穷人的巴士底狱”。

Second, class environmental discipline and control are also manifested in health interventions and controls over workers’ health and epidemic infectious diseases. Its core is rooted not only in the state apparatus but also in laws, the police, health control institutions, charitable associations, educational institutions, and religious organizations that maintain normal production. “The operation of these organizations is more like a monitoring institution of one class over another, the latter precisely because they are less able to protect themselves, becoming a source of collective danger.”[26]26 This is a quotation from an unspecified source, likely a Western Marxist scholar, used by the author to support the argument. Under the threat of epidemics, health police are “extraordinarily active,” conducting surprise inspections in working-class districts and sealing off entire rows of cellars and small houses. Every slum becomes a stronghold of infectious diseases, from which plagues spread in all directions and invade the dwellings of the propertied classes. The public nature of environmental pollution forces the bourgeoisie to re-examine environmental issues for the first time at the level of the whole society and the whole class, ultimately adopting some minor preventive measures, but these are not thorough. As long as it does not endanger their own environment and health conditions, or the operation of capitalist production, the bourgeoisie can display indifferent apathy toward meeting the housing environmental needs of the proletariat. The consequence of all this is the recognized general physical weakening of the working class, increased mortality, and shortened life expectancy. *The Condition of the Working Class in England* points out that this significant shortening of average life expectancy occurs mainly among the working class, while the mortality rate among the upper and middle classes is lower. Mortality is higher in areas where coal miners are concentrated than in agricultural areas. “Our fellow countrymen in masses, our hundreds of neighbors, are annually destroyed for want of the most ordinary precautions,” Engels pointed out sharply. “How the need for housing is met can serve as a yardstick to measure how all other needs of the workers are met,”[27]27 This is a paraphrase or composite quotation from Engels’s *The Condition of the Working Class in England*. including important indicators such as environment and health.

其次，阶级的环境规训和控制还表现在对工人健康和流行传染病的卫生干预控制上。其核心不仅仅根植于国家机器之中，实际上还包括维持生产正常进行的法律、警察、健康控制的卫生机构、慈善协会、教育机构和宗教组织等。“这些组织的运作更像是一个阶级对其他阶级的监控机构，后者恰恰是因为他们不太能自我保护，而成为集体性危险之源”。在流行病威胁下，卫生警察们“异乎寻常的积极”，到工人区进行突击检查，把整排整排的地下室和小宅子封闭起来。每一个贫民窟都会成为传染病的大本营，瘟疫会从那里向四面八方传播，会侵入有产阶级的住宅。环境污染的公共性迫使资产者第一次从全社会、全阶级的层面上重新审视环境问题，最终采取了一些微小的预防性措施，但是并不彻底。只要不危及自身的环境与卫生状况，不危及资本主义生产的运作，资产者对无产者住宅环境需要的满足就可以表现出无动于衷的冷漠。这一切所引起的后果就是公认的工人阶级身体普遍衰弱、死亡率升高和寿命的缩短。《状况》指出，平均寿命大大缩短这种情况主要发生在工人阶级方面，而上等阶级和中等阶级的死亡率较低。煤矿工人聚居的地方死亡率高于农业区。“我们的大批同胞，我们成百的近邻每年因缺乏最普通的预防措施而被毁灭了”，恩格斯一针见血指出，“如何满足住房的需要，是可以当作一个尺度来衡量工人其余的一切需要是如何满足的”，其中包括环境与卫生健康等重要的指标指征。

Finally, capital’s discipline and control are not only directed at the workers’ living environment and health but are also concentrated in the establishment of the factory system. Regarding the layout and buildings of large industrial machine factories, Engels called them “the old barracks-style factory buildings.” With doors and windows tightly shut, foul air, and harsh management, they constitute a prison-like enclosed space of the factory building environment. Engels pointed out that the chains of slavery used by the bourgeoisie to bind the proletariat are fully exposed in the factory system. In the factory, the factory owner is the absolute legislator, able to arbitrarily issue, amend, and supplement various regulations, placing the working class under stricter surveillance than black slaves. Arbitrary extension of working hours, arbitrary fines, and the truck system and the cottage system further worsen the miserable working environment of the working class. “In most branches of labor, the worker’s activity is confined to trivial, purely mechanical operations,” fixed, repetitive, year after year. Braverman called this “deskilling.”[28]28 Harry Braverman (1920–1976), an American Marxist, coined the term “deskilling” in his 1974 work *Labor and Monopoly Capital* to describe the degradation of work under capitalism. “This forced labor deprives the worker of all time except the most necessary for eating and sleeping, leaving him not a moment for breathing fresh air or enjoying the beauty of nature, let alone any intellectual activity.”[29]29 This is a quotation from Engels’s *The Condition of the Working Class in England*. Specifically, the factory system achieves the discipline and control of the workers’ working environment through three dimensions: space, time, and the body.

最后，资本规训与控制不仅针对工人生存环境和卫生健康，还集中表现在工厂制度的建立。大工业机器工厂的设置与建筑，恩格斯称之为“旧的兵营式的工厂厂房”。门窗紧闭、空气恶劣、管理苛刻，构成工厂建筑环境封闭空间的监狱。恩格斯指出，资产阶级用来束缚无产阶级的奴隶制的锁链，在工厂制度上原形毕露。在工厂里，厂主是绝对的立法者，可以随心所欲地颁布、修改、补充各种法规，使工人阶级处于比黑人奴隶更严格的监视之下。任意延长工时、随意罚款，以及实物工资制和小宅子制，更加恶化工人阶级悲惨的工作环境状况。“在大多数劳动部门，工人的活动都局限在琐碎的纯机械性的操作上”，固定、重复，年复一年。布雷弗曼称之为“去技能化”。“这种强制劳动剥夺了工人除吃饭和睡觉所最必需时间以外的一切时间，使他没有一点空闲去呼吸些新鲜空气或欣赏一下大自然的美，更不用说什么精神活动了”。具体来讲，工厂制度通过空间、时间和身体等三个维度实现对工人工作环境的规训与控制。

In terms of spatial restriction. The capitalist application of machine production not only creates competition and unemployment among workers, disciplines and controls their labor time, bodily expression, environmental living conditions, physical health, and lifespan, but technological inventions and the application of machines also create a public environmental space. Work spaces such as farms, factories, and workshops are all embedded with appropriate techniques of surveillance, punishment, and discipline. Foucault pointed out that in the 18th century, large factories employing hundreds of workers emerged, which “could fix individuals in specific areas, force them to adopt specific postures, and submit to specific habits,”[30]30 This is a reference to Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, as developed in his 1975 work *Discipline and Punish*. subjecting them to surveillance and servitude. The working environment of workers is generally characterized by pollution, dampness, filth, lack of oxygen, and stench. This enclosed, suffocating production space and its control over the body and mind of the working class open up a new field of analysis for capital’s environmental discipline and control.

在空间限制方面。机器生产的资本主义应用不仅造成了工人的竞争与失业，规训和控制了工人的劳动时间、身体表达、环境生存状况、身体健康和寿命长短，而且技术发明及机器的应用还创造了一个公共场所的环境空间。农场、工厂和车间等这些工作空间都被嵌入了监督、惩罚和纪律的适当技术。福柯指出，18世纪出现上百工人工作的大型工厂，“能够把人固定在特殊的区域，强制他们作出特定的姿势，服从特定的习惯”，对他们进行监督和奴役。工人工作的环境普遍表现为污染、潮湿、肮脏、缺氧、臭气熏天。这种封闭狭小的、令人窒息的生产空间及其对工人阶级身体和精神的控制，为资本的环境规训与控制开辟了新的分析领域。

In terms of temporal control. The factory owner discovered that having workers labor in the factory was much cheaper than in the workshop; as a result, the workers lost their right to freely dispose of their own time and had to obey the factory clock. They worked from morning to night until the signal to stop was given. The Factory Acts stipulated the working hours for all factories. Workers had to arrive at the factory at five in the morning. If they were a few minutes late, they were fined. Whether eating, drinking, or sleeping, everything was done on command. There were also night shifts, double shifts, and the practice of forcing workers to work continuously for thirty to forty hours several times a week, keeping them for long periods in a harsh factory environment. Especially under conditions where there were no mandatory regulations for factory ventilation and cleanliness, the working class was, in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, “more like slaves than the American Negroes, because they are under stricter surveillance.” [31]31 This quotation is from Friedrich Engels, *The Condition of the Working Class in England*. What is more, the capitalists also used fraudulent means, by adjusting the factory clock forward (for the start of the shift—to make workers arrive as early as possible) and backward (for the end of the shift—to make them leave as late as possible), to strengthen their control and exploitation of the workers.

在时间控制方面。厂主发现让工人在工厂工作比在作坊要便宜得多，这样一来，工人失掉了自由支配时间的权利，要听从工厂里的钟声的指挥了。他们一天到晚工作，直到发出下工信号为止。工厂法规定了一切工厂的工作时间。工人必须在清晨五点到工厂。如果迟到几分钟，那就得受罚。无论吃饭、喝水、睡觉，都得听命令。还有夜班制、两班制，以及强迫工人连续工作三四十个小时，每周几次，使工人长时期处于恶劣的工厂环境中，尤其是在工厂通风和保持清洁没有任何必须的规定条件下，工人阶级在资产者那里，比“美国的黑人更像奴隶，因为他们处于更严格的监视之下”。更有甚者，资本家还用欺诈的手段，通过调早（上班时间——使工人尽量早到）、调晚（下班时间——使工人尽量晚归）工厂的钟声，加强对工人的控制与剥削。

In terms of bodily control. The capitalist’s use, maintenance, and renewal of the worker’s “labor power” (involving the health, occupational diseases, and lifespan of the working class) were subject to the different working environments differentiated by occupation. Consequently, the “body” of the working class presented various new variables: fresh, strong, weak, usable for a short term, purchasable cheaply, etc. “It is situated not only between the rare and the numerous, the submissive and the stubborn, the healthy and the sick, the strong and the weak, but also between those of greater and lesser use value, those more and less conducive to profitable investment, those with better and worse prospects for survival, death, and disease, and those with better and worse conditions for being trained into useful talents.” The biological shape of the working-class population, revolving around the occupational environment, became a factor of vital interest to the economic management of capital.

在身体控制方面。资本家对工人“劳动力”的使用、维护和更新（涉及工人阶级的健康、职业病和寿命长短等），受制于因职业而区分的不同的工作环境，因而工人阶级的“身体”呈现为各种新的变量：新鲜的、强壮的、虚弱的、短期可使用的、可便宜购买的等，“它不仅处于稀有者和众多者、服从者和顽固者、健康者和患病者、强壮者和羸弱者之间，而且也处于有较大利用价值者和较小利用价值者、较利于盈利投资者和较不利于投资盈利者，生存、死亡和疾病前景较好者和较差者、被训练成有用之才的条件较好者和较差者之间”。工人阶级人口的生物学形状围绕着职业环境，成了资本经济管理利害相关的因素。

In reality, the environmental expression of the working-class body is a joint product of the factory environment and the use of machinery under the discipline and control of capital. “From the 18th to the early 20th century, the disciplinary and surveillance effects of power on the body were heavy, protracted, meticulous, and constant.” The height at which machines were installed, the quality, size, and spatial density of conveyor belts and machinery, the presence or absence of safety equipment—all directly controlled the expression of occupational environmental diseases in the workers’ bodies. Engels conducted a detailed investigation into the relationship between the factory environment and bodily expression. For example, the consequence of flax spinning was a specific deformity of the shoulder, a protrusion of the right shoulder blade caused by the nature of the work; mending broken threads required pressing the knee against the spindle, necessitating constant bending; machines installed not far from the ground caused insufficient growth and development; in the blending of flax, water splashed from the spindles soaking the front of the clothing, and the floor was always covered with water, leading to colds and lung diseases. Besides causing illness and deformity, work on machinery also maimed workers, leaving them missing a hand or half an arm, a foot or half a leg. “It is as if one were living among a group of cripples returned from a battlefield,” “this is characteristic of all factory workers.” In fact, in the capitalist factory, “there is nothing more material, physiological, and corporeal than the exercise of power.” Engels, citing the views of Sir D. Barry, summarized the discipline imposed on the worker’s body by factory labor: (1) The unconditional adaptation of one’s bodily and mental activity to the movement of a machine driven by a uniform, unceasing force. (2) The prolonged maintenance of a standing posture. (3) Sleep deprivation, low-ceilinged, cramped, dusty or damp workshops, dirty and stuffy air. Such a harsh working environment caused the environmental expression of bodily deformities in workers. Many workers aged prematurely, suffered vision loss, died young; young workers had stunted development; women suffered more severe pelvic curvature than male workers. The harm of the factory environment was revealed through bodily injury, morbidity, shortened lifespans, and even death. “The factory is the true entrance to hell.” And all of this must be attributed to the result of the discipline and control of capital.

实际上，工人阶级身体的环境表达，是资本规训与控制下工厂环境与机器使用的共同产物。“从18世纪到20世纪初，权力对身体的规训和监控作用是沉重的、冗长的、细致的和经常的”，机器安放的高低、传送皮带机器的好坏、大小及安置空间密度、安全设备的有无等，直接控制着工人身体的职业环境疾患的表达。恩格斯详细调查了工厂环境和身体表达之间的关系。如纺麻的后果是肩部的特殊畸形，由劳动性质引起右肩胛骨向前突出；接断头用膝盖抵住锭子，必须时时弯腰；机器安得离地不高，引起生长发育不足；亚麻的混纺工作，水从锭子上溅透前襟，地上总是积水，导致感冒和肺部疾病等。机器上的工作，除了引发疾病和畸形，还会使工人成为残废，缺一只手或半只胳膊，缺一只脚或半条腿，“简直就好像是生活在一批从战场上归来的残废者里面一样”，“这是一切工厂工人的特点”。事实上，在资本主义工厂里，“没有比权力的实施更加物质的、生理的和肉体的了”。恩格斯引用戴·巴莱爵士的观点，总结了工厂劳动对工人身体的规训：（1）必须无条件地使自己的身体和精神的活动适应由均匀的无休止的力量来发动的机器的运动。（2）长期保持站立的姿势。（3）睡眠被剥夺，低矮、拥挤、满是尘土或潮湿的工作室、肮脏而闷热的空气。这样一种恶劣的工作环境，造成了工人身体畸形的环境表达。许多工人未老先衰、视力衰退、夭亡，青年工人发育受阻，妇女比男工更严重的骨盆弯曲，以身体的伤害、病态和寿命缩短甚至死亡，揭示工厂环境的危害。“工厂是地狱的真正入口”。而这一切都不得不归于资本规训与控制的结果。

IV. Conclusion

四、结语

Since the advent of industrial civilization in human society, the ancient topic of class exploitation has increasingly attracted attention and been problematized, and it has been highlighted from the perspective of the environment. As the “first ecological political theorist,” Engels examined the oppression and exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie, pointing out that in the process of capitalist industrialization, urbanization, and capital expansion, natural resources and the social environment were greatly damaged. The living and working environments of the working class were severely polluted, placing them in extremely harsh survival conditions. Benton, in his article “Engels and the Politics of Nature,” notes that *The Condition of the Working Class in England* “is of particular interest today because Engels links the environmental conditions and health of the industrial working population to their working conditions and class relations.” Through a new reading of *The Condition of the Working Class in England*, the following conclusions can be drawn.

人类社会自工业文明以来，阶级剥削这一古老的话题日益受到关注并被问题化，而且以环境这一视角凸显出来。作为“最初的生态政治学家”，恩格斯考察了资产者对工人阶级的压榨和剥削，指出在资本主义工业化、城市化和资本扩张过程中，自然资源和社会环境遭到极大破坏，工人阶级的生活和工作环境受到严重污染，处于极端恶劣的生存状况。本顿在《恩格斯与自然的政治学》一文中指出，《状况》“这项工作今天特别引人关注，因为恩格斯把工业劳动人口的环境条件和健康与他们的工作条件和阶级关系联系起来”。通过对《状况》的新解读，可以得出以下几点结论。

First, Engels, from an environmental perspective, pioneered the connection between labor exploitation and environmental exploitation. While capital exploits natural resources, it also exploits the environmental survival rights of the working class. The more rapidly capitalist accumulation proceeds, the more miserable the environmental conditions of the working class become. Capital’s first and only principle is the economic principle. This principle overrides the relationships between nature, society, and people, and treats nature and the workers who, lacking capital, have lost all means of production, as objects for extracting profit, thereby deepening the natural ecological crisis and the environmental catastrophe of the proletariat. “Whatever is not profitable is stupid, impractical, and a fantasy.” “The relationship of the factory owner to the worker is not a human relationship, but a purely economic one.” The factory owner is “capital,” the worker is “labor.” “He does not regard the worker as a human being, but merely as a ‘hand’.” Therefore, the brutal labor exploitation of workers by the bourgeoisie is the root cause of all the environmental disasters suffered by the working class.

第一，恩格斯以环境的视角开创性地关注到劳动剥削与环境剥削之间的关系。资本剥削自然资源的同时，也剥削工人阶级的环境生存权利。资本主义资本积累越迅速，工人阶级的环境状况就越悲惨。资本首先的和唯一的原则是经济原则。这一原则凌驾于自然、社会与人的关系之上，并把自然和没有资本从而失去一切生产资料的工人当作榨取利润的对象，从而加深自然生态危机和无产阶级的环境灾难。“凡是不赚钱的都是蠢事，都不切实际，都是幻想”，“厂主对工人的关系并不是人和人的关系，而是纯粹的经济关系”，厂主是“资本”，工人是“劳动”，“他不把工人看做人，而仅仅看做‘手’”。因此，资产阶级对工人残酷的劳动剥削是一切工人阶级深陷环境灾难的根源。

Second, the environment is not an external, neutral entity. In capitalist society, the environment nurtures, creates, uses, and distributes relationships between people, and inherently contains a class analysis of the environment that distinguishes class identity, status, and power. The housing and its distribution formed in the large industrial cities of Britain since the 18th century were precisely the initial and most important site for the environmental differentiation, segregation, and control of proletarian individuals. The class distribution of housing was manifested not only in the class antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between capitalists and workers, but also in the environmental stratification and differentiation, environmental identity recognition, environmental closure and segregation, and the classification of occupational diseases by environment, all centered on class exploitation and oppression—that is, the environmental differentiation and opposition of classes.

第二，环境不是一种外在的、中立的存在物，在资本主义社会，环境孕育、创造、使用和分配了人与人之间的关系，并内在地包含区分阶级身份、地位和权力等环境的阶级分析。18世纪以来英国大工业城市形成的住宅及其分布，正是对无产阶级个体进行环境区分、隔离和控制的最初和最重要的场合。住宅的阶级分布，不仅表现在资产者和无产者、资本家和工人之间的阶级对立，而且也表现为以阶级剥削压迫为轴心的环境分层与区分、环境身份识别、环境封闭与隔离和环境的职业疾病分类等阶级的环境区分与对立。

Third, the factory (as an institution) became a “dark region” [32]32 The term “dark region” (黑暗区域) is an allusion to Michel Foucault’s concept of the “dark region” or “dark space” in his analysis of power, discipline, and the spatial confinement of deviance or abnormality, as developed in works such as *Discipline and Punish* and *Madness and Civilization*. where capital exploited urban space. As a new phenomenon of urbanization in the 18th-century industrial era, the factory was a capital instrument that exploited human beings as tool resources together with natural resources, possessing a self-enclosed spatial environmental isolation function. If Foucault believed that the 18th-century hospital was a place where people and disease were confined together, then this judgment is equally applicable to the capitalist factory system since the 18th century: the factory, as a historically unique product of the capitalist mode of production, is a place where the working class is confined together with a harsh environment.

第三，工厂（制度）成为资本剥削城市空间的一个“黑暗区域”。作为18世纪工业时代城市化的新现象，工厂是一个把人作为工具资源与自然资源一起开发利用的资本工具，具有自我封闭的空间环境隔离功能。福柯认为18世纪的医院是一个把人与疾病拘禁在一起的地方，那么，这一论断同样适合18世纪以来资本主义的工厂制度：作为资本主义生产方式历史独特产物的工厂，则是一个把工人阶级与恶劣环境拘禁在一起的地方。

Fourth, the capitalist system is the root of class-based environmental exploitation and oppression. Engels pointed out that in the era of large-scale industry, class-based environmental exploitation has been deeply embedded in the capitalist system and has become the most important indicator of the bourgeoisie’s exploitation of the working class. The development of capitalist private property turns human beings into commodities, and the competitive system subjects millions of people to environmental “slaughter” through poverty. In this “social murder,” the proletarian is doomed “inevitably to an untimely, unnatural death, a death as violent as if he were stabbed or shot; if society deprives thousands of the necessities of life, places them in conditions in which they cannot live, if society uses the iron hand of the law to force them to remain in such conditions… these thousands will inevitably become the victims of these conditions.” This irrational, anti-ecological environmental situation “stems from a hierarchical, class-based, and now fiercely competitive capitalist system.” Therefore, “the cause of the miserable situation of the working class is not to be sought in these minor abuses, but in the capitalist system itself.”

第四，资本主义制度是阶级的环境剥削与压迫的根源。恩格斯指出，大工业化时代阶级的环境剥削已经深深根植于资本主义制度之中，并成为资产者剥削工人阶级最重要的风向标。资本主义私有制的发展使得人成为商品，竞争制度使得千百万人受到环境贫困的“屠杀”。在这场“社会谋杀”中，无产者注定“不可避免地遭到过早的非自然的死亡，遭到如同被刀剑或枪弹所杀死一样的横死，如果社会剥夺了成千人的必需的生活条件，把他们置于不能生存的境地，如果社会利用法律的铁腕强制他们处在这种条件之下……这成千的人一定会成为这些条件的牺牲品”。这种非理性的、反生态的环境状况“源于一个等级制度的、阶级性的和如今激烈竞争的资本主义制度”。因此，“工人阶级处境悲惨的原因不应当到这些小的弊病中去寻找，而应当到资本主义制度本身中去寻找”。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗